Copyright Questions

Copyright Questions – an OLA member service

OLA has a partnership with Community Legal Services (CLS) at Western University where law students, under the supervision of a lawyer, provide legal opinions on intellectual property (IP) matters (trademark, copyright, patent, personal data protection, privacy, etc.) to persons or organizations.

How does the service work?

Questions pertaining to copyright law, trademark, patent, personal data protection or privacy, as with any legal questions, are situational and specific. Members can ask a question, at no cost, for which a legal opinion may be provided.

If you have a question about a copyright, trademark, patent, personal data protection or privacy issue, send an email to Shelagh Paterson, Executive Director, with your name and phone number. Your message will be forwarded to CLS, in confidence, and a CLS worker will follow up with a phone call to you to ask more specific questions related to your situation and to determine whether a legal opinion can be provided. If one can be provided, you will receive a legal opinion letter from CLS a few weeks later.

OLA will subsequently publish without any identifying details, a summary of the legal opinions given by CLS to OLA members on the OLA web site for the benefit of other OLA members. The summary will not contain information specific to the individual or the organization originally seeking the opinion.

OLA would like to thank Doug Ferguson, Director of Community Legal Services, Rob Galloway, IP law student, and Dr. Margaret Ann Wilkinson, Professor, Western University, for their commitment to this project.